Saturday, January 18, 2014

School-in-hospital expanded

KUALA LUMPUR: The "Hati Nuraini" committee plans to extend its school-in-hospital (SDH) initiative to three more hospitals this year following good response.

Its patron, Puan Sri Noorainee Abdul Rahman, who is the wife of Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, said two of the schools would be set up in East Malaysia.

"We plan to introduce the programme at Sarawak General Hospital in Kuching and Children and Women Hospital (Hospital Likas) in Sabah. Both hospitals will house the first SDH in East Malaysia.

"We also plan to introduce another SDH at Tuanku Jaafar Hospital in Negri Sembilan," she said after visiting University Malaya Medical Centre's SDH, which began its first schooling session here yesterday.

Noorainee hoped the three schools could be set up before the end of this year to ensure that children who were hospitalised would not be left out in their education.

At present, she said, 10 hospitals ran the SDH programme, which had 19,240 participants since it was introduced in July 2011. Serdang Hospital recorded the highest number of student enrolment with 3,173 pupils.